The administration is insulating the president from the press, closing to the full press pool the signing of Obama’s singular foreign policy achievement, the ratified New START arms control treaty with Russia. The White House then released a photograph of Obama being briefed about... the weather in the middle of the country. Eyes are open in the offices of the National Security Staff, but mouths are closed. At yesterday's Cabinet meeting, the president's staff allowed only photographers into the session as opposed to the usual practice of taking a question or two or, at the very least, saying something. This is a White House that doesn't want extemporaneous remarks to trammel on its carefully crafted statements that are aimed at a layered audience -- Mubarak, the Cairo street, the broader Arab world, America, Israel, and so on.That's devastating, frankly, but Ambinder isn't that critical, unsurprisingly.
Jennifer Rubin offers some analysis, "Obama: Rushing to Catch Up With the Revolution." But see Victor Davis Hanson, at National Review, "Obama's 1979":
Yes, our third year of Obama hope and change is beginning a lot like 1979 (I’ll skip the domestic parallels), as an unjust and imperfect world rejects the utopian visions of another liberal idealist, and sees magnanimity as weakness to be exploited rather than as kindness to be reciprocated.Ouch.
Amazing parallels.
RTWT.
Image Credit: Darleen Click.